Isaiah 45:8 – “Distil, O heavens, and pour out your righteousness (norms of heavenly behavior). Let the earth open wide so both rescue that restores and heavenly norms can sprout up. I, the LORD, created them these norms and their restoration.”
- ra’aph and nazal, distil and pour out. The sense of “distill” is that the humidity turns into liquid, forming droplets that gain weight by combining until the clouds can no longer hold them, and they fall down.
These words are a couplet describing a meteorological process. Water is present in the atmosphere, distributed as tiny particles of moisture. In this way, it is a storehouse of rain, hidden to the eye because it is distributed in unseen portions. As atmosphere changes, temperature drops result from air rising and cooling. These cause the small amounts of water to combine and condense. The change is called “convergence” in meteorological terms. The convergence combines vast distribution of vapor causing clouds. The clouds can be seen because the convergence begins to block light, the vapor condensing creates a heavier distribution of vapor in the air. A cloud forms when air heated by the sun rises like a balloon. As it rises, it slowly cools until it reaches the saturation point and water condenses. The cloud floats because it is warmer than the outside air around it. The cloud appears, becomes visible, because of this process of distilling. It pours out because of further atmospheric changes.
A cloud forms may also form because of mountains whose elevations direct wins blowing into it upward. Picture a weather front in the same way: Heavier, colder air pushes down, forcing warmer air to rise through air mass collision. (“Winds colliding at the surface, like two freight trains, have no where to go but upward.”) We call this “convergence.” Air moving upward by these collisions continues to condense. Moisture drops form. An accumulation of drops collides and merges until they become heavy enough for gravity to extract them from the clouds as “rain.” Rain is water that rises up, accumulates, collecting into increasingly heavier droplets, and falls because it becomes too heavy for the cloud. Here we are talking about rain from heaven in the prophetic sense, a different source of spiritual moisture releasing what has been stored, held back, awaiting release.
I saw the showers of heaven falling and the earth responding, sprouts emerging from once barren soil. The sense was that other rains and waterings had never awakened these seeds. The life in them is heavenly, so only heavenly rain will awaken that heavenly life. I heard God say that other waters have created “run off” and the limitation of rain has caused us to design an irrigation system that allocates a limited supply. When heaven’s rain falls, the old system must be broken up. A new distribution will occur. Heaven will rain. Therefore, heaven will determine where the rain falls. The distribution will come from above, not beneath, controlled by God, not man.
Cisterns breaking up! Irrigation lines broken to pieces! Pumping stations shut off! Dismantled and shipped to other areas as discards.
“O Earth, open up so restorative rescue and heavenly norms can sprout up together.”
When what-God-intended falls in the form of heavenly rain, something in the earth must open up, because something is falling that is different from the common rain that has maintained the present conditions, nourishing seeds of “the-way-things-are,” season after season.
Heavenly rain awakens a heavenly seed. Heavenly rain awakens seeds of purpose, so restorative rescue grows up, a restoration of hidden purposes, to produce heavenly behaviors.
The Lord creates this unusual condition, an awakening of life buried and waiting for the proper kind of rain. God says, “Heaven and earth, be fruitful, produce salvation that restores what-God-intended in this season.”
- June 11, 2005 – Israeli doctors and scientists have succeeded in germinating a date seed nearly 2,000 years old. The seed, nicknamed Methuselah, was taken from an excavation at Masada, the cliff fortress where, in A.D. 73, 960 Jewish zealots died by their own hand, rather than surrender to a Roman assault. The point is to find out what was so exceptional about the original date palm of Judea, much praised in the Bible and the Koran for its shade, food, beauty, and medicinal qualities, but long ago destroyed by the crusaders. Announcing in December 2009 that a 4,000-year-old seed that was found during an archaeological dig in the Aegean city of Kütahya has germinated, Professor Nejat Bilgen from Dumlupınar University said that being able to analyze the characteristics of plants from centuries ago would be a scientific breakthrough. Professor Bilgen stated that while his team was conducting an excavation in the district of Seyitömer in Kütahya, they found a container holding seeds, many of which were burned and useless. “However, three seeds we found were not damaged, and we have been carrying out research on these seeds for two years. Our attempts to germinate them had previously failed, but this year, one of the three seeds germinated. When the germination is complete, the plant will be presented to scientists for further analysis.”
The sprouts that germinate from heavenly seed will be young and tender. It is not time to stomp around in the fields, but it is time to stomp out the religious systems that have had control of the prevailing conditions dominated by an earthly water supply. God is not’ angry with leaders or anyone in particular in this vision. He calmly shatters usurping systems. This causes tremendous dismay to leaders who honestly cannot see how to they can function without the usurping systems. They will now learn to recognize that God can distribute His rain.
This is caused some gardens to dry up. Because God is not raining on them, and the prevailing spiritual rain dominates the atmosphere, they cannot sustain growth. These gardens will receive rain only when they are cleared off, so the sprouts that respond to heaven’s rains can be awakened.
This is true of our own lives. We must allow for examination of our own irrigation systems. God dismantles and destroys our own way of getting water to things, our own dependency upon cisterns and pumps and pipelines. It feels uncomfortable when God shatters our irrigation systems without which you would have total crop failure. The way you get what you need will change. Big time. You will feel frustrated when what you think is your source of water fails, and God waters some ground that you thought would not produce. He reserved for the sprouts that only respond to heaven’s rains.
